Something that ought to have lain there unnoticed
by Second Star On The Left
Summary: Elorian understands before Sansa does, which is probably why he changes to a tiny little field mouse and scampers up her sleeve, so he can't be taken away from her when she begins to rage and scream as Ice descends and Mafanwye fades in a brilliant starburst of golden dust. Daemon AU.


Elorian understands before Sansa does, which is probably why he changes to a tiny little field mouse and scampers up her sleeve, so he can't be taken away from her when she begins to rage and scream as Ice descends and Mafanwye fades in a brilliant starburst of golden dust.

He hides in her hair when she slumps mindless and boneless in Meryn Trant's arms and has to be carried away, staring at the last spot Mafanwye stood before Father's head-

They're dumped awkwardly on Sansa's bed, and as soon as they're alone Elorian shifts to a direwolf, just as he always does when Sansa needs comfort. He nudges her splayed legs up onto the bed, butts his head against her side until she rolls over away from the edge, nips her slippers off her feet and then sprawls out along her side, licking hopefully at her face.

She doesn't even lift a hand to twist into his ruff, and he whines plaintively as tears begin to slide down her cheeks even though she has not moved since they were brought here.

* * *

She aches for Father, for Mother, and Elorian for a moment considers shifting into a hulking mass of soft dark grey fur like Mafanwye, or sleek, glossy feathers like Aridail. He has never quite been able to match Mafanwye's shape (it took longer than it might have to understand why that was, and Sansa had blushed quite red when Septa explained that male and female animals and people are made differently, and she blushed quite scarlet when Maester Luwin explained _how_ ), and Aridail has always been so very dignified that it makes Sansa blush when Elorian tries to copy Mother's daemon.

Mafanwye is (was) a wolf of some description, not quite as wild as Robb and Jon and Uncle Benjen's direwolves, more like one of the tame, working wolves Uncle Benjen says the wildlings have. Aridail is an ice-bird, a flightless bird from the Lands of Always Winter who loves to swim in even the coldest of waters. Mother often laughs at that, because much as she loves swimming she can't abide cold water any more than she can abide Aridail being far from her.

Elorian misses Mafanwye and Aridail as much as Sansa misses Father and Mother, but they huddle close together and look as pretty as they can manage and act, act as if their lives depend on it because they _do,_ if the Queen and Joffrey think Sansa and Elorian are misbehaving they could do something horrible or even kill them for it, and they want to get home so much that they will not risk that.

At night Elorian shifts to a direwolf and Sansa cries.

* * *

Elorian is a better actor than Sansa, because he knows to take pretty shapes when they dine with the Queen at night, jewel-toned butterflies and sweet songbirds and elegant cats.

The Queen likes cats, of course. Her own daemon is a lioness – not a lion, which makes Sansa's skin crawl in a quiet sort of way, because it's queer and unnatural for a daemon to be the same sex as its person – who slinks about in a smug, golden manner despite not being near so lovely as the Imp's, who Sansa saw at Winterfell, or the Kingslayer's lion, who is a beautiful creature even if he is strange for being male.

Elorian is never a direwolf around the Queen. Never even a dog. No matter that he spends every night as a direwolf, no matter that it feels wrong to be so ostentatiously lovely now, even though they both delighted in being bright and colourful and lovely _before._ It is not safe to be a direwolf now, not when direwolves (Galia, Robb and Galia) are so… Frowned upon.

* * *

The Queen asks if Elorian has been staying in any one shape more often than usual. Sansa lies and says she can hardly remember the last time he took the same shape twice in one day, making no mention of the long, warm hours he spends curled around her at night.

When the Queen asks how it is, then, that Sansa's maids have made mention of a direwolf more than once, Elorian knows that he must avoid taking the shape of a direwolf even at night, even to comfort Sansa.

Neither of them can find peace when he changes to a cat of any sort, and dogs and wolves are not safe anymore, not when the Queen might decide to punish them for it, and so the nights are not so warm because Elorian dares not shift to anything that might earn the Queen's displeasure.

* * *

The first day Joffrey orders his Kingsguard to strike Sansa, Elorian is in the shape of a particularly iridescent beetle and hides in her elaborately styled hair, staying close to her.

The second day, he is a tiny grass snake of a particularly lovely combination of brilliant green and deep bronze, and winds around her wrist like a bracelet.

The third day, he is a hummingbird, still tiny and pretty but away from her, and Joffrey's horrible ugly vulture daemon Gullan catches Elorian in her claws and _holds_ him as Sansa skids across the floor, and the pain, oh, _gods,_ the pain of being so far, and as Sansa strains towards her Elorian, Joffrey laughs and his daemon bobs further away, and only the discomfort Sansa's screams of agony seem to cause Cersei bring an end to the torture-

This becomes a regular thing, Joffrey and Gullan straining Sansa and Elorian's bond, pulling them apart as far as they can bear and just a touch further, laughing when Sansa and Elorian scream in pain, and when Elorian refuses to come out of Sansa's hair, when he hides down her gown, well, Joffrey has the Kingsguard tear her hair from its elaborate stylings, rip her gown apart, and then he has his sport as Sansa lies on the ground and sobs.

* * *

On the day Robb takes the Kingslayer, Joffrey shows what he truly is.

He _touches_ Elorian.

Sansa is sick before all of court, falling to her knees and emptying her stomach on the polished floor as Joffrey's hands grip Elorian's delicately tufted ear (he is a dainty little wildcat like the ones Uncle Benjen used tell tales about today, it is safe to be a cat because the Queen likes cats) and Joffrey holds so tightly that Elorian can't shift, can't get away, and when he _twists_ Sansa's world spins and she falls sideways and it's so horrible, so thoroughly horrible and painful and no, no, this is _wrong,_ nobody should touch Elorian but _her-_

* * *

They curl up together in bed that night, pressing as tight together as they can and trying to shut out the world.

"I saw Mother touch Mafanwye once," Elorian whispers, nuzzling under Sansa's chin, still too shaken to shift out of the wildcat shape, "but Father seemed to like it."

"How could he have liked that?" Sansa asks, horrified at the notion of finding pleasure in that horrible, terrible, nauseating agony. How is it possible that anyone could like that? From the moment Joffrey laid hands on Elorian, Sansa felt as if her stomach was trying to turn in on itself and her heart was about to rupture-

"Mother just stroked Mafanwye's fur, the way you touch me," Elorian explains. "Maybe it is different if you love one another."

"I don't know if I could bear Joffrey touching you again," Sansa says, wrapping herself tighter around him. "I couldn't bear _anyone_ to touch you, not ever."

* * *

The Imp returns and is Hand of the King, and he is so thoroughly disgusted by Joffrey touching Elorian that his daemon attacks Gullan and he removes Sansa to rooms in the Tower of the Hand, sets a guard on her so Joffrey and his vulture cannot get near to her and Elorian.

It works, to a point, but Joffrey is more creative than Tyrion gives him credit for and, when Sansa finds herself locked in the library with Joffrey and Gullan keeping Elorian on the other side of the door, laughing about wanting to know how severing _truly_ affects people, because they want to know if touching Elorian will affect Sansa less if she cannot see them do so, Sansa screams and screams and screams and batters at the door until her hands and arms are a mass of bruises and her skin is split and she cannot move her fingers for the tremors that start at her shoulders and don't stop, not until she has Elorian tucked inside her gown, his heart fluttering against her own. She has only the Hound to thank for getting Elorian back, because while she dreams of the day when Joffrey grows bored of tormenting her she knows that he will not, and the Hound came to him with a summons from Tyrion and he left Sansa and Elorian to their pain.

She does not leave her room for some days after that, as much because the threat of severing, of breaking her bond with Elorian, with her _soul,_ terrifies her so much that she cannot bear the thought of risking it by being near to Joffrey as because of Maester Pycelle's advice that she rest and allow her arms to heal.

* * *

Elorian is a magpie on the next day Joffrey touches him.

He is a magpie the day after that, and the day after that, too, and they reluctantly come to the agreement that yes, Elorian has settled, and they are now properly grown.

He is the most beautiful magpie Sansa has ever seen – his plumage is glossy, black with a sheen of a hundred colours – and so they decide that a magpie is a good shape indeed to have settled on.

Neither of them mention it, but Old Nan had a rhyme about magpies, one that started _One for sorrow._

Sansa has never seen another magpie daemon in King's Landing.

She holds Elorian as close as she dares, with his delicate wings, and weeps, for the Queen said that as soon as he settled, Sansa would be wed to Joffrey.

* * *

Battle rages and the skies above the city glow green with wildfire, and Sansa and Elorian sing a song for a broken man who has become defined by the daemon who howls at his side.

She soon forgets him, though, when the roses flood the city, because they free her of Joffrey, distract him and keep him away from her and keep her safe, tucked among them, keeps his grasping, grabbing hands away from Elorian, because that is what matters most now.

Then Margaery, sweet Margaery, whispers of a plan.

"My brother, Sansa, he is… He is a good man," she promises, holding tight to Sansa's hand. "Willas will be a good husband to you, I swear it."

"Surely there are other women, more eligible-"

Margaery exchanges a glance with her grandmother, who sighs.

"He was severed, child," Olenna Redwyne says baldly, stroking her daemon, a fox by the name of Selvet, as she speaks. "Fighting Ironmen on the west coast when he was not much older than you. Threw himself between his fool grandfather and a Valyrian sword, got himself severed."

"He is still whole," Margaery rushes to assure Sansa, who feels pale and dizzy. "Willas is a good man, Sansa, I would not lie about such a thing."

 _Severed._ No wonder he is still unmarried, despite his rank and age. Victims of severing are reviled as barely human anymore, with broken wrecks of daemons if their daemons survived as more than shadows, if they survived at all. Is it any wonder that they are ostracized, considering the links they shared with their daemons were butchered?

Sansa has heard tell that the wildlings beyond the Wall send their leaders to a place that changes the bond, that they use it as a test of worth, but she cannot imagine what worth could be measured by such a thing. She knows from bitter, terrible experience just how painful a thing it is to be far from your daemon, so she cannot even begin to imagine how Willas Tyrell Few had the presence of mind left to function even marginally well, much less qualify as _whole._

Even fewer survived the experience long, and if Willas truly lived nine long years after being severed…

"He and Rosaria will look after you and Elorian well," Margaery insists, letting her Cosima dance across her fingers in that spindly way of hers (Sansa still finds it odd that Margaery's daemon, a queer, angular insect with long front limbs that blends well against the green silks Margaery favours, is female). "They _are_ whole, Sansa, just… Different."

* * *

It makes no difference if Willas Tyrell and his daemon are whole or not, because someone tells the Queen of the plot, and she tells Lord Tywin, and suddenly Sansa is refusing to kneel and allow Tyrion Lannister to wrap her in crimson and gold, she has Joffrey twisting Elorian's tail plumes and promising to get a Lannister babe on her, and the Imp – no, her lord husband, how has it come to this – is drunkenly ordering their _wedding guests_ to forgo the bedding ceremony.

And then she is sitting in the bed of Tyrion Lannister in just her shift, bruises from her last beating still livid on her pale skin, Elorian fluttering anxiously over and back across the top of the headboard, and Tyrion is sitting with his back to her.

"I will not touch you, my lady," he says at last, slurred and hoarse but still determined. "I have no desire to be a rapist."

He blows out the candle, and Sansa is thankful he cannot see her weep.

* * *

Tyrion's daemon, Kalise, is…

Not what Sansa would have expected, she supposes.

For one thing, while Tyrion is angry and distant and peculiarly sad, Kalise is very maternal towards Elorian, in an odd sort of way, snapping viciously at Gullan whenever she strays too close to Elorian, smoothing Elorian's ruffled feathers with a flick of her coarse tongue whenever he works himself up into a state.

Sansa still prefers to sit alone with Elorian, because that makes it easier to go to the godswood alone to speak with Ser Dontos and his strange cat, but Kalise's protectiveness is more welcome than she would care to admit.

It keeps Gullan away from Elorian, after all, and for that Sansa will suffer even having to bear the name of Lannister and wear their colours.

* * *

Tyrion tries. It is not enough, not when Sansa finally hears the truth of what happened at the Twins. Not when she hears of what they did to Galia, what they made Robb watch, not when she listens to the whispers of Mother and Aridail being tossed near-dead into the Trident, Mother bleeding the rest of the way to her grave and Aridail fading one gold-glittering speck at a time.

No, it is not nearly enough, no matter how much he sighs and pouts and how carefully Kalise attempts to tend Elorian. Nothing any Lannister does will ever be enough, not now.

* * *

There is a hairnet and a pig and Gullan twitching on the top table as Joffrey's face purples, but Sansa barely remembers that in the light of a glimmering mockingbird with a cuckoo on its shoulder.

Petyr Baelish smiles and strokes his little beard and takes her away from King's Landing, and even if Elorian shies away from Baresse they are away from Joffrey and Gullan and Cersei and her lioness and-

Aunt Lysa is not at all like Mother, and her otter, Tremille, is a cruel little creature that moons after Baresse the way Lysa moons after Littlefinger ( _Father, I must remember to call him Father)_.

Sansa curls up under the covers with Elorian as Lysa screams for a babe, but it cannot drown out the differences between these parents she is now supposed to claim and those taken from her by the Lannisters.

* * *

There are friends to be made in the Eyrie, on the way there, too, but Sansa cannot bring herself to make them – Alayne, mercifully, is a shy girl even for her age, and so she is left much to her own devices.

Lady Lysa – always my lady, never any affection, not when she so suspects everyone who might take her precious Petyr's attention away from her – is at turns attentive and cold, as if there are two women warring with one another inside her head. Tremille is dismissive of Elorian at best, though, and Sansa has long since learned to take the reactions of a daemon as truer than those of its person.

She watches Elorian shy away from Tremille and Baresse, thinks of Aridail and Mafanwye, and she escapes into the gardens where no one will see her weep.

She builds Winterfell. Petyr behaves in a manner unbecoming of a man playing at being her Father. Lysa loses her mind, then her life.

* * *

Sweetrobin is anything but sweet, and his daemon, unsettled Calfey, is even less so.

Still, Sansa pities her little cousin, and he _does_ seem fond of Alayne and so Sansa allows herself to be pushed aside to keep the ailing Lord of the Eyrie happy, lets Alayne take forefront. Elorian plays at being a friend to Calfey, which is harder and harder as Sweetrobin's health fails further and faster and unstoppably, because Calfey cannot hold a shape for more than a few moments.

She flickers-flickers-flickers as Sweetrobin shakes-shakes-shakes.

* * *

Petyr ( _not Father,_ never _Father, and Baresse will_ never _replace Mafanwye_ ) coaxes and teases and bribes the lords of the Vale into doing his bidding, coaxes and teases and bribes kisses from Sansa, and on the day Harry Hardyng and his… His mountain goat or whatever Mari is, on the day they spend the entirety of the feast staring at Sansa and Elorian ( _Alayne and Ragor, Alayne and Ragor),_ Petyr goes too far.

He lets the very tips of his fingers brush against Elorian's tail feathers.

Sansa near has a fit like Sweetrobin's that night, because this cannot be happening again, even without the pointed quest to cause her pain the touch of Petyr's skin on Elorian made her stomach turn, it _cannot be happening again._

But it is, and when he chucks his knuckles under Elorian's chin three days later Sansa feels the need to scrub her skin raw in answer.

At least it is easier to hide the sickness than it was the pain. And at least Petyr does not threaten to take Elorian away from her – no, he needs them whole for his plans, so he will never threaten that.

He watches her in a way that feels like a threat, though, and that makes Sansa guard Elorian ever closer to her.

* * *

Harry is sweet, she supposes, but he and Mari are too familiar far too quickly, and Sansa clings to the hope that her marriage to Tyrion will prevent Petyr's plans from coming to fruition – because as much as she wishes to reclaim Winterfell as her own, Petyr's kisses and lingering touches and those horrible predatory looks make her skin crawl, and she wonders if there is not something wrong with her and Elorian, something broken by Joffrey's… Joffrey's…

Randa speaks often and candidly about horrible things, and she often tells morbid tales of terrible things that happened during this war and that, and when she refers to someone touching another's daemon without their consent as rape, Sansa cannot help but agree.

She and Elorian have been defiled and ruined and broken by Joffrey, and the horrible filth of that will never, ever go away.

* * *

Sweetrobin's health fails further still (Sansa knows that Petyr has something to do with it, but she is too afraid to say anything because she cannot quite read Petyr and Baresse's reactions well enough just yet) and Petyr begins to closet himself away with Lady Waynwood, leaving Sansa to keep Harry entertained. He grows fonder and fonder of Alayne as Sweetrobin grows weaker and weaker, and by the time a week has passed Sansa thinks that she will cringe every time Harry speaks for the rest of her life.

Nobody seems to _care_ that Petyr is hurting Sweetrobin, which makes Sansa's blood boil – he is only a child, a babe, really, because of how Lysa treated him, and he cannot defend himself from his stepfather's machinations. That these _fine men_ are so willing to allow such a thing to happen, well, Sansa thinks every single one of them could do with a night or two in the sky cells.

* * *

Sweetrobin is brought out on a day when he should have been left in bed, despite Sansa's very vocal protests and the maester's advice. Petyr _insisted_ that the Lords Declarant needed to see their liege, and so Sweetrobin is duly carried out and seated on the Weirwood Throne, his little hands shaking and Calfey flick-flick-flickering in his lap.

"The one with the Valyrian sword," Elorian whispers from his perch on her shoulder, sharp claws digging into her skin through her gown, "Sansa, the one with the Valyrian sword, why is he drawing his blade?"

Ser Lyn Corbray has been told by Petyr to cause a scene, to draw attention to Sweetrobin's weaknesses and mayhaps even cause a fit that could be Sweetrobin's last.

Sansa does not know this, which is why she shrieks and leaps to Sweetrobin's protection, gathers him close and tumbles him out of the cold chair which might have been his death, and then she screams.

Lyn Corbray's sword of Valyrian steel fell.

Sansa was on one side of the blade.

Elorian was on the other.


End file.
